


Grown Accustomed to His Face

by demonrubberducky



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Autistic Lalli, Canonical Character Death, Eventual Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26653051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonrubberducky/pseuds/demonrubberducky
Summary: Touch usually sets Lalli on edge. Except, with Emil, he’s grown accustomed to it. Maybe even likes it. A little. Maybe.
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	1. Prologue

Prologue

One of the first things people tend to notice about Lalli is his peculiarity. He’s never tried to fit in, never cared about being normal. Most of his weird habits, he’s had since very early on, and he's made no effort to curb them.

\---

Food is one. His parents struggled to get him to eat at a child. “So picky!” the neighbors would complain when he turned his nose up at certain foods. But his mother, always so patient with him, would just say, “Oh, he’s particular about certain textures.” Crunchy foods were best. If it had to be something wet, it had to be uniform, not filled with chunks or bits. His mother carefully chopped and blended, and praised him whenever he tried even a bite of a new food, whether he finished it or not. The neighbors shook their heads, but Lalli ignored them and focused on his mother.

The aversion to certain foods remain with him into adulthood, and without his mother’s watchful eye, ensuring he eats, he stays rail-thin. Onni despaired about keeping his little cousin fed, and Tuuri watched him pick at his food like a bird and just sighed.

\---

Sound is another. His grandmother was the first to recognize his reactions to sounds others couldn’t hear. The volume of the spirit voices grew as Lalli did, though his little village was blessedly quiet, with trolls kept away by the patrolling adults and the spirits of the dead guided to Tuonela by their mages. Ensi brought him out on patrol with her, taught him to sort between what he heard with his ears and what came from his mage-senses. 

“You hear that voice?” She said once, crouched behind a fallen tree on one of the outer islands. He nodded dutifully up at her. She turned to him, and with a slow, assured motion, cupped one hand over each of his ears, muffling the sounds of the forest around them. A moment later, she drew her hands back.

“And you heard that? It didn’t get quieter like everything else, did it child?” Lalli shook his head. The mournful whispers had sounded the same, whether his ears were blocked or not. Ensi said nothing more, just beckoned him to follow silently on. Most of her lessons were like that, short and to the point. Neither of them were one for unnecessary words. He now had a way to identify which sounds to tune out, and that was enough.

\---

The sleeping under beds came later. Before the kade came, he slept in the bed his parents tucked him into at night, or in the bedroll he proudly rolled out beside his grandmother’s when they were on patrol together. But after Toivosaari fell, he listened for days to screams that eventually faded out into deafening silence. After that, he prefers to sleep somewhere sheltered, where if he opens his eyes, he’s shielded from anyone else’s gaze. It’s not every night he needs to do that, but still more often than not.

\---

The biggest one, though, is touch. People, as a whole, are pack animals. They hug and punch and pat and poke, and think nothing of it. Lalli hates it. Unexpected touching sets him on edge. He feels it too strongly, hyper-aware, like his skin is buzzing from it. Usually a glare or a hiss is enough to deter people from it, though there are some stubborn idiots who insist on doing it no matter what fuss he makes.

That isn’t to say he never wants to touch someone else. There are just times and places for it, and only with certain people. His grandmother was like him in that respect. She also kept her distance from people most of the time. Sometimes, during their lessons, she’d lean in and quickly adjust his hold on her rifle, or tap his shoulder and silently point at a Beast in the distance. She covered his ears once, to teach him to distinguish audible sound from spirit sounds. These interactions, he never minded. He treasured them, actually, because she _understood_ what it was like, and because she never treated him like he was a child. Each lesson, whether it was in words or in actions, she was imparting on him because he was special, like her.

His parents, too, were allowed to touch him without any fuss. Well, he didn’t _like_ when his mother pinched his cheeks in public, but what young boy did? At home, though, where no one else could see, he’d sit in her lap for story time and let her call him “Lalli-bunny” or whatever silly nickname she’s come up with, and rest his head on her shoulder. He’d tell his father what he’d learned in his scouting lessons, and his father would pat him on the head and say he’d done well, and that was ok too. 

Tuuri and Onni, it depended on the day and his mood what he’d let them get away with. Usually, he preferred to be near them without direct contact, but it wasn’t too grave an offense when they’d take him by the elbow to guide him in a different direction or rest a hand on his shoulder. They were family, and it was to be expected.

Everyone else, though, there had to be a _reason_ for them to interact, or else he’d hiss at them or use his scouting skills to simply escape the situation all together. Once, one of his teachers back at Keuruu had tried to pat his shoulder the way he’d seen Onni do, and Lalli has disappeared from the barracks for two days, skulking in the forest until a furious Onni lured him back in with a pouch of cookies and a disappointed look. 

Their expedition was full of annoying people with no sense of personal boundaries. Torbjörn Västerström’s children were the worst offenders (though Tuuri shuts them up with something she snaps in Swedish), and he was glad his exposure to them was short. Captain Sigrun was a puncher. Mikkel, their doctor/cook/pack-mule person, was too nosy and questioned whether Lalli was clean enough after scouting, had he eaten enough, was that little scratch bothering him? Reynir, that tall idiot stowaway, has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries. And then there's Emil.

…and then there’s Emil…

\---

The thing about Emil is, he is just as needlessly touchy-feely as the rest of the crew. Except, when he punches Lalli in the arm and Lalli snarls, something changes in his eyes. A moment of realization, a widening of his eyes. He’ll say something that Lalli can’t understand, except that he _can_ understand enough by context. _Whoops, sorry. I won’t do it again._ Except he does, because he forgets. But Lalli doesn’t mind it so much. Because the thing about Emil is, he’s gentle, like Lalli’s mother had been. Not weak; Emil’s learned to kill beasts and trolls without hesitation. If Lalli had to put a word to it (which he doesn’t, as if he’d talk about any of this to anyone ever), Emil is kind. And when he touches Lalli, it doesn’t give him that ants-crawling feeling of wrongness. It’s nice. Maybe. A little.

\---

Maybe part of it is just that he’s grown accustomed to Emil’s presence.

“I think he likes you,” Tuuri teased him once, after he awoke from one of his long, magically-drained collapses on the cat-tank. “He was worried. Kept checking on you to make sure you weren’t dead or something. I told him it was nothing to worry about, but he wouldn’t listen. Just kept poking you to make sure you were still breathing.”

So maybe that’s the start of it. Maybe Emil’s a mastermind, getting Lalli used to him while he’s asleep. After that, when Lalli goes to sleep, sometimes he imagines the ghosting of fingertips along his cheeks, over his forehead to brush away his head. When he wakes up from a magic-drain, he’s always in a foul mood to open his eyes and not find Emil nearby like Tuuri said.

\---  
It only gets worse when he’s in Emil’s head, watching through Emil’s eyes as Emil tends to Lalli’s husk of a body. Because what before he’d imagined, now he _knows_. He knows the way Emil brushes his hair back while he sleeps, the way he gently holds the back of his hand over Lalli’s lips to feel the faint heat of his breath. 

Emil exhausts himself dragging both of them through the snow-covered woods, but still summons up the energy to arrange Lalli’s body comfortably. Strips Lalli out of his wet outer layers of clothing so he can dry them by the fire. Lalli now knows how Emil would undress him, and he doesn’t know how to _unknow_ that.

…Doesn’t know if he _wants_ to unknow that.

\---

The thing about Emil is, Lalli doesn’t have to be on guard around him, the way he does with almost everyone else. Emil is the kind of idiot who’d mourn over some old dog-beast. (Lalli gives the creature a proper send-off so that Emil won’t have to keep worrying about it. The stupid, sappy Swede.) Emil is… thoughtful, and he makes an effort, even when there’s a language barrier between them. There’s no way he’d ever knowingly hurt another human. Lalli knows it wasn’t just Emil’s slower speed that kept him from cutting and running when Lalli was lost in his head. 

…And Emil’s not a mage. So there’s no danger when Lalli looks into his eyes.

…at least, not that kind of danger….

Anyways, Emil is a stupid but loyal, annoying but kind person, and he’s Lalli’s first and only friend.

And Lalli sort of maybe wants to touch him more, and he has no idea where he’s supposed to go from there.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lalli and Emil stay at camp and have a much more eventful day than they'd planned.

**Present Day, Saimaa  
Midnight**

When Lalli awakens, there’s a bone-weary exhaustion in every part of him, except for his face. One side feels too-warm. On the other side, he feels gloved fingers brush against his temple. He keeps his eyes closed, keeps perfectly still and silent, and listens.

The forest is quiet, but that’s not unusual. The sound of ragged breaths beside him, someone with an elevated heartbeat. In the distance, a twig snaps, and the breather inhales sharply, goes rigidly still where Lalli’s cheek is pressed against his leg.

No smell of campfire, but a familiar scent right next to his nose. One Lalli finds relaxing. He often steals clothes with this scent to curl up with when he sleeps.

“What happened?” he asks Emil in Finnish that is so sleep-slurred the idiot Swede will have no hope of understanding it. His eyelids pry open a crack, which feels like a monumental effort.

Emil shifts beside him, gasping quietly in relief. The gloved hand that had been idly stroking his face moves to place a finger over Lalli’s lips.

“Shhhhh. Quiet.” He whispers in Swedish above Lalli. There’s barely any light, only what the near-full moon and stars provide through the trees, but Emil’s relieved smile shines like a miniature sun. Lalli can barely look at it.

Emil lifts his hand, and Lalli struggles to sit up. Emil reaches out and takes his elbow to help haul him up, hesitating partway through, but taking Lalli’s lack of hissing as tacit permission to continue.

They sit side to side, hip pressed to hip, and look out at the dark forest around them. They are alone, in the dark, with only Reynir’s runes scratched in the dirt around them and guns they cannot use to protect them from whatever it is circling them in the darkness.

**Seventeen Hours Earlier**

“…and Sigrun was very quick to pick Mikkel to go with her for the supply run, did something happen between them while I wasn’t there? She keeps going on about how much he can carry.”  


Tuuri is perched on his shoulder, chirping in his ear.  


“Don’t care.”  


“All I am saying is that she normally takes Emil with her! It makes sense to leave you, since you scouted all night.”  


“Still don’t care.”  


“Lalli! I need the gossip! You are no fun!”  


Lalli shoos her off of him. She’s been back for three days. It took about a day and a half for the joy of her return to wear off enough for him to get back to their normal cousin dynamic. 

Tuuri chatters on, undeterred. Lalli cannot understand _why_ she thinks he needs her to translate every stupid thing every stupid member of the team says, but maybe she is making up for lost time.

“And can you _believe_ how quick Reynir wore Onni down into training him? I thought it’d be weeks of begging.”

Lalli scowls. “They’re both idiots. They deserve each other.”

Tuuri cackles a high-pitched tweeting laugh as she flaps in the air above his head. “Ah, still mad that Onni lied to you? You and your grudges, Lalli.”

She lands in one of the branches above his head. “I think it helps that Reynir has developed his runes so much. If he makes wards for them, even Onni can’t say it isn’t safe for them to… do the mage-walking whatever.”

For someone who loves learning as much as Tuuri, she’s never shown much interest in learning about the finer points of magic. Probably because she can’t do it, Lalli thinks. Tuuri has always cared about what she can experience, and what skills she needs to remove the barriers to getting there. Languages, mechanics, bookkeeping, those were all in pursuit of the larger goal, seeing the world.

…for all the good it did her.

Lalli drops into a crouch and pulls out his puzzle cube to work on. The little slide and click of the squares is soothing, as is the satisfaction of getting the faded colors to line up. 

Tuuri lands back on his shoulder and bumps her little feathered head against his cheek. Her spirit form tingles against his skin, but he allows it anyways. 

**Midnight**

“Where Tuuri?” Lalli asks, low and in his stilted Swedish, right next to Emil’s ear. The Swede’s hair is still perfect, even though the rest of him is frazzled in the darkness, and it brushes against Lalli’s nose as he leans in to speak.

Emil shakes his head, more tickling of hair against his face. “Don’t know. You said something to her when it started raining.” Lalli picks up most of the Swedish words, and fills in the rest with context. He leans back and raises a hand to his cheek, where he still feels the ghost of Emil’s touch.

Beside him, Emil’s eyes flick to Lalli, and his cheeks do that puffed-up thing he does when he’s flustered. If there was enough light, he’d probably be red. Emil says nothing about how he’d been petting Lalli before, and turns very purposefully back to scanning the forest around them.

It was stupid to ask Emil about Tuuri, he realizes. His brain must still be half-asleep. Emil can’t see her, so even if she’d come back, he’d never have known. Lalli looks around as much as he can without moving himself, but he doesn’t catch sight of her. Hopefully, she reached Onni and the tall idiot in time, and his two cousins are safe behind one of Reynir’s barriers….

**Twelve Hours Earlier**

Sigrun and Mikkel and Kitty have been off for a couple of hours now, gathering supplies from the town Lalli scouted and mapped for them last night. Onni and Reynir are off near a little pond a short hike away from the camp, practicing some mage concentration techniques. Emil has been on guard duty while Lalli was sleeping. He’s taken a bath, spent way too long on his hair, made lunch for them, and played with some old cards. 

Lalli knows all of this because Tuuri insists on narrating it when he wakes up, no matter how many times he tells her he doesn’t care.

Emil looks at him arguing with empty air, snorts under his breath, and turns back to the lunch he’s reheating. Tuuri laughs, and Lalli’s scowl goes even deeper. Stupid Tuuri, being invisible to Emil.

Emil brings over the lunch as Lalli slips back into his outdoor wear and stretches out his limbs. It’s a porridge; Lalli’s bowl is smooth and uniform, Emil’s has berries mixed in. Emil sets down the bowls, and brings out a little plate of berries and a couple of cookies stolen from Mikkel’s secret supply, which he places in front of Lalli. 

Emil looks to Lalli for approval, and Lalli… stops scowling. Emil grins, and takes a seat beside him. They both eat, and Tuuri is suspiciously quiet above them.

Far above the trees, dark clouds begin to form.

**Eleven Hours Earlier**

“Should I make a late lunch for Reynir and your cousin? I don’t know how long mage training takes. They’ll probably be back soon, right?”

Emil and Lalli are sitting across from one another, playing cards. Lalli caught most of what Emil said, and Tuuri pipes in to translate any word she thinks her cousin might not have learned yet. She’s taking translating duties way more seriously as a spirit bird. Maybe because right now, she can only talk to Lalli, and it gives her something to do.

The sky above them has grown darker in shades, so incrementally that they don’t notice until the first crack of thunder in the distance draws them out of their game. 

Emil and Lalli look up in unison, and Lalli’s stomach sinks when he sees the thick curtain of clouds that are moving their way, blowing in faster now on the winds of a storm. The shadows of the trees grow longer, until they begin to blend and lose their definition in the darkness.

Things begin to stir in the darkness.

Lalli leaps up and grabs the tarp from other their tent. Emil immediately falls into step beside him. A circle of Reynir’s practice runes are scratched lightly in the dirt their campsite. He’d been demonstrating them to Onni that morning. He would have redrawn them in earnest around the whole campsite before nightfall, but that isn’t going to happen now. 

The two boys rush to stretch the tarp over the circle, sacrificing the tent, spare coats, anything they can grab before the rain sets in and washes them away.

“Tuuri, go find Onni! Tell him to stay put. Make Reynir draw his ruins there. Don’t let him come back here!” 

Tuuri squawks out an affirmative, and soars off. Her spirit glow disappears beyond the trees, and Lalli can only hope that she finds them in time. He can’t lose another cousin. He… he just can’t.  
Raindrops begin to fall, first a mist, then fat, angry drops. With no sunlight to keep them at bay, Beasts begin to come out early.

**Midnight**

Lalli’s eyes snap over to the ring of runes around them. Even in the low light, his night vision is good enough to see them. They’re still there, protected by the hasty canvas he and Emil set up over them.

“When rain stop?” he asks in Swedish. Beside him, Emil shrugs.

“Don’t know. A few hours ago? It was dark by then. Nobody else has come back.” Emil shivers. Lalli feels it where their arms are pressed together. The circle doesn’t give them much room for personal space, but Lalli doesn’t mind. Emil’s presence beside him is reassurance that he’s still alive and alright.

Beyond the circle, their camp has been torn up. Only the few items within the circle were protected. Emil’s gun, which is laying across his lap, ready to grab and level at an approaching Beast; Lalli’s rifle, also stashed in Emil’s reach; their knives; a pack, maybe Reynir’s. Emil’s cloak is spread like a blanket over Lalli, pushed aside now that he’s sat up.  
Emil reaches for something tucked on the other side of him, and comes back with Lalli’s Rubik’s cube. 

“I grabbed this for you. I wasn’t really thinking.” He sounds apologetic. Well, he can get lectured later by the more responsible members of the team for not prioritizing essentials. Lalli takes the cube from him, and their fingers brush clumsily. 

“Thanks,” he mutters in Swedish. They both look away.

**Ten Hours Earlier**  
Little beasts always come out first, more assured of finding shelter in the shadows even if the run reemerges from the storm clouds. Those, the mice and voles and shrews, Emil and Lalli dispatch with their knives whenever one wanders too near. 

The larger, more dangerous creatures, are more cautious, but they begin emerging within the hour. It’s hard to hear their approach, masked by the heavy rain. With a wordless glance, Emil and Lalli abandon trying to keep the campsite safe and duck into the safety of the rune circle. They have their weapons already in hand, and they grab what supplies they can on the way. Lalli ends up with Reynir’s bag simply because it was the closest one to grab.

Lalli settles into the circle, wonder if he’s overreacting. 

A bolt of lightning illuminates the darkness for a split second, and through the trees, they see a giant, antlered silhouette. It lumbers closer. A moose, with eyes long-since rotted away and teeth grown out unnaturally sharp. 

Lalli and Emil stop breathing. Stand still, stay silent. Stand still, stay silent. Maybe it will pass. The rain sounds deafening to their ears. With Reynir’s runes around them, the creature doesn’t see them. But it takes a deep, shuddering inhale with its boney snout, and it _smells_ them. 

It lowers its head, and charges the camp. Antlers tear through the tent, hooves trample their cookware. Reynir’s circle holds, and the creature unconsciously steps around them, but with the amount of destruction it is doing so close to them, it’s not going to matter soon. The moment the debris from its rampage fall on the rune circle and disturb it, they are dead. 

Emil’s hands tighten around his gun, and Lalli grabs his hand to stop him. The cacophony of the storm isn’t enough to guarantee masking gunfire, and a single shot isn’t likely to take this monster down. It’s too dangerous.

Lalli begins to mutter under his breath, summoning up his magic. He gives Emil’s hand a squeeze, then lets it drop. A moment later, his cat luonto emerges. It leaps out of the circle and pounces at the moose. Tearing claws across its nose to get its attention, the cat hisses and begins to run in the opposite direction that Tuuri had flown away. The moose bellows in fury, and charges after it.

‘Go as far away as you can,’ Lalli prays, and collapses, unconscious.

**Midnight**  
“No more… _moose_?” He asks, switching back to Finnish for the final word, because he has no idea what it is in Swedish. “Big weird thing?”

Emil leans close so they can speak quieter. “No. There was a ??? and a few ????, but they stole some of our food and passed on. I thought a ??? would give us trouble, but I threw a stick and it followed the sound and left.”

More animal words he hasn’t learned in Swedish yet, but Lalli nods anyways. They are gone, which is what matters.

“Reynir’s runes really work, huh? We should thank him when he gets back.”

Lalli and Reynir look at one another, lips quirking, and at the same time, say, “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I am still getting a feel for the best way to structure this story. It'll probably get canon-divergent from here on out. These silly boys, where will they go next?
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has left a comment, kudos, or just read along. I hope you are enjoying!

**Author's Note:**

> Title from My Fair ~~Lalli~~ Lady.
> 
> This should be a few chapters long, but I'm not sure of the length just yet. Updates may be slow, because what is time in quarantine?
> 
> Unbetaed.


End file.
